Jasmin Patel, a resident of Ranjitsagar road, Pushkarsdham society in Jamnagar, reported that his nine-year-old niece bought the package from a nearby shop at around 8 pm.She opened the packet around 10 pm, and after taking a bite and sharing it with his daughter, they discovered a dead frog inside and immediately discarded the packet. Patel then approached the store but received an unsatisfactory response, prompting him to call the company’s customer care. “A lady had picked the phone and she replied to me that I am free to take any action I want,” said Patel.
D B Parmar, a food safety officer of JMC, said, “We got a complaint on phone by a customer Jasmin Patel, who bought Balaji’s simple crunchy salted wafer and found a dead frog. We have come to the shop from where he purchased this wafer packet and seeing the packet, it looks like it was a frog inside the packet. We are taking samples of wafers of the same batch number from the distribution agency for laboratory test.”
Gujarat is home to around 300 snack makers, contributing to about 20 percent of India’s snack market. Balaji is the largest among them, with a turnover of Rs 5,000 crore.
Jay Sachdev, the marketing manager of Balaji wafers, told TOI, “We maintain complete hygiene while producing the snacks in our factory and it’s not possible to find frog inside our snack packet. We allow visitation of our plants to the students every week. Even though if JMC starts investigation we will fully cooperate.”